do not think the necessity exists for discarding it. I be- 

 lieve it is better for a great many men in all walks of life 

 to have moderate opportunity to hunt rather than this 

 sport be confined to limited class. From the patriotic vievsr- 

 point, field sports furnish a practical antidote to Bolshe- 

 vism on the one hand and on the other the experience 

 thus gained best fits men for the raw material from which 

 armies are made. Can we afford to sacrifice either of 

 these national advantages? How would we be better 

 off, to have game in greater abundance on smaller areas 

 killed by a smaller number of men who had the price to 

 pay for the sport even if this game were put on the market 

 as a source of food supply? It is utilized as food in any 

 case. 



We might consider it if the necessity existed for making 

 the change, but I cannot see that there is such a necessity. 

 I admit at once the sacred right of property, and I do not 

 believe that the land owner should be .obliged to let Tom, 

 Dick and Harry trample his standing grain in pursuit of 

 game, but there is no reason why Tom, Dick and Harry 

 cannot have a place to shoot as well as the club man. 

 Two thirds of Connecticut is wild land where the shooter 

 takes nothing the land owner provided and even in Iowa, 

 perhaps the star agricultural state of the Union, there 

 are 3,250,000 acres of non-tillable land, which is more 

 land than the state of Connecticut. There is still ample 

 room to gun provided the shooter is not put off the land. 



So long as the ordinary shooter does not trespass on 

 posted land, he has a fundamental right to take this wild 

 game wherever he finds it. This country has a different 

 law than that of any other country. It is that the wild 

 game belongs, not to the land owner, but to the people. 

 This is the decision of our highest tribunal, the Supreme 

 Court of the United States. I believe in giving men of 

 wealth every opportunity to increase the game on their 

 land after European methods, but I do not believe in a 

 dog in the manger policy which would tie up most of the 

 remaining land while only a small portion would in reality 

 be used for game propagation. Our laws today recognize 

 just this point. They encourage the land owner to grow 

 the game that experience has shown can best be increased 

 artificially, and they give him the sole right to kill such 

 game. As a corollary, should not the public have the 

 right to shoot on non-utilized lands when no damage is 

 done and the owner does not care? 



A pshycological revolt against game laws and game 

 protection. This wave has involved many shooters as 



22 



